‘DIY compost box’ – perfect for small gardens!

This weekend has been one for ‘making things’, I spent much of yesterday evening making dream catchers for the house… Also considering selling them, but thats a decision for another day and blog haha.

Today we made our own compost boxes for the garden.

Now, I know what you are thinking, why make one when you can buy a perfectly good compost bin from a store?! Well, with the limited space we have in our teenie yarden, we need something equally teenie. Plus, we don’t have LOADS of plants so a huge compost bin would be redundant.

So I picked up two 10 litre boxes for £4.00 and a can of black spray paint for around £6.00 from B&M Home Stores. Now, for the composting to happen properly, it needs to be kept dark and warm, so a clear box won’t really work. B&M didn’t have any opaque boxes, but these had black lids so I figured I could just paint the clear boxes… Genius!

So yes, you can do this at home too, either by buying opaque boxes, or painting them like us!

If you do paint them, make sure you spray on a covered surface in the garden or in a well ventilated area. They need an hour or so between coats and around 24 hours to be fully dry.

Once dry, you need to drill holes in the bottom, this lets moisture drain out so you don’t get mushy compost! I used a battery operated drill and started with small holes and then moved up to larger ones to avoid the plastic cracking.

It should then look something like this…

Once fully dry and with the lids on, these guys will be ready to go out into the garden. You can compost lots of things really; vegetable peelings, egg shells, plant cuttings and old soil.

Next weekend I’m going to pop these in the garden and start to fill it with compostable goodness… Plus I’m going to scout out a few worms to pop in there too!

Not bad for £10.00 🙂

Top tip: Make sure you turn over the contents of your compost box/bin every so often. It helps with the breakdown of matter.